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CapitalPress.com
August 18, 2017
Bamboo a lifelong interest
Capital Press
ALBANY, Ore. — From
a young age, Dain Sansome
was interested in bamboo.
The owner of Bamboo Val-
ley in Albany, Ore., Sansome
fell in love with Asian themes,
such as martial arts, Japanese
gardens and bamboo, after
seeing a National Geographic
special about bamboo. During
high school in Minnesota, he
started growing his first plants
that he bought mail-order
from a catalog.
“They did OK, but they
didn’t grow like I wanted
them to,” he said. “So I went
to Japan and saw the big
stuff.”
Sansome later moved to
Oregon with his Japanese
wife and began working at
Bamboo Gardens in North
Plains, Ore., where he was
Vertical green lines that look
like paint marks are common
on this variety of bamboo. Bam-
boo Valley grows 20 varieties of
bamboo.
Photos by Aliya Hall/Capital Press
Dain Sansome is the owner of Bamboo Valley, a nursery and farm
in Albany, Ore. Sansome was interested in bamboo at a young
age, ever since National Geographic came out with a special about
bamboo.
trained. In 2004, he opened
Bamboo Valley, which is both
a farm and nursery.
“I always wanted a farm
more than a nursery. A nurs-
ery in my mind means small
plants, which is fun and nice,
but I like the ‘big’ stuff,” he
said. “That feeling of actu-
al mature bamboo, it’s really
magical. It’s all one organism
and you can get inside of it,
which is a neat feeling.”
Beyond selling bamboo,
Sansome also offers land-
scaping and stump-grinding
services.
“There’s a demand for de-
livering plants, planting and
removing. I wanted to get my
hands into everything,” he
said.
Sansome said bamboo is
often purchased for privacy
screens.
“It’s used for landscaping
and beautification. It has a
lightness and airiness about it
that evergreens do not. Bam-
boo is very different, it has an
exotic feel, an airy quality of
leaves that rustle in the wind;
people like having that op-
tion,” he said.
Despite popular miscon-
ceptions, bamboo is not a tree,
but rather a grass.
Sansome said there are
several misconceptions re-
garding bamboo, such as
there’s no maintenance, all
of it comes out of China and
that there’s only one type of
bamboo.
“There is a lot of variation
in bamboo. All are different,
even within a genus. There
are differences in cane color,
shoot appearance and leaves.
It’s really fascinating,” he
said.
Bamboo Valley grows 20
varieties, but the overarching
categories are running and
clumping bamboo. Sansome
said the grasses are mainly
“old favorites” with a few
newer varieties.
Running bamboo varieties
are popular for landscaping
because of their rapid hori-
zontal growth, which is useful
for creating privacy screens.
They can “run” from a few
feet to 10 or 20 feet depend-
ing on the soil, which makes
maintenance important be-
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cause bamboo “wants to be-
come a forest,” Sansome said.
Clumping bamboo, how-
ever, only spreads horizontal-
ly for a short distance before
shooting upward. It is usually
less than 15 feet tall, but some
varieties can grow to nearly
20 feet tall.
Harvesting the bamboo is
the most challenging aspect
for Sansome because of how
thick the rhizome runners are
underneath the ground.
“They can be as thick as
your thumb; cutting them is
hard. I’ve tried everything
from axes and shovels, we’ve
graduated into hydraulic
equipment now,” he said.
With the difficulties in har-
vesting the bamboo, keeping
enough in stock is also chal-
lenging. Most of Bamboo Val-
ley’s customers are retail, and
it’s important for customers
to see the product, grab it and
go, Sansome said.
Sansome loves having the
opportunity to meet and con-
nect with new people through
the nursery, landscaping and
stump-grinding, but nothing
beats being outside in the sun.
“I spend the vast majority
outside in the sunlight; I love
that,” he said. “Being able to
have a family and piece of
land that essentially is a giant
garden.”
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By ALIYA HALL